


but if i were that kind of grateful, what would i try to say?

by elsinorerose



Series: out here in the dark [5]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Action, Angst, Arguing, But it's there, Disassociation, Don't Judge Me, F/M, Mentions of the rest of the Nein, Suicide Attempt, also there's a dragon, i wrote this in a fever dream over thursday night, i'm not a DM you guys, maybe? i don't even know, nongraphic discussion of torture and trauma, nothing graphic or violent though, references to Trent Ikithon and the Cerberus Assembly, slight fudging of D&D mechanics, the three As
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 04:34:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18066677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsinorerose/pseuds/elsinorerose
Summary: "Dawn is near. It is achingly beautiful, with little stray snowflakes floating down every few minutes. They remind him of ashes.Please, he thinks, just get me to the caves before the sun rises. Let me do this one thing right."





	but if i were that kind of grateful, what would i try to say?

Snow crunches under Caleb's feet. Every few yards, he stops, turns to look behind, to see if he's being followed, and to whisper the simple cantrip he has been practicing to cover up his footprints. It is slow going like this, but also his only chance. By the time the sun comes up, if they are able to figure out where he is headed, they will be able to stop him.

He clutches the stone in his pocket tightly. Its cold, uneven edges dig into his skin, keeping him here, present, able to breathe, able to look ahead through the darkness of the pines and cedars without screaming. At least they will not have to worry about this stone anymore, he tells himself grimly. It has been preying on his mind, like so many other things have, in the three or so weeks since they dug it out of the necromancer's hoard north of Bladegarden. Those ice-locked ruins had held many buried secrets, but so far, Caleb thinks, he is the only one to have worked out exactly what this one does, and why it is so dangerous.

It must be taken away from the others, and so he has brought it along with him. He may as well. It is the very least he can do.

There is a sudden sound behind him, the snapping of a twig, and Caleb whirls, heart thudding against his collarbone — and something scurries away through the dense underbrush. An animal, then. Relief and disappointment meet somewhere in the middle of his stomach and he shoves a shaking hand over his mouth to stop the bile rising in his throat. A hare, probably, or a fox. He could summon Frumpkin to go check, just to be sure, but that would mean…

No. He has taken care of that. Time to move on.

The cave system he is seeking is not much farther now, he thinks, if the compass in his head and the few stars still visible through the treetops are not lying to him. Three miles north-east from the waterfall, that's what the caravan leader told them all several days ago. Better to take the long way around, even if it means mountain travel. You don't want to be messing with dragons, now.

_ I bet we could take a dragon. We could take a dragon, couldn't we, Fjord? All of us? I mean, yeah, we fucked up that one time with the happy fun ball, but maybe we could take it by surprise, right, like, get a reward, or maybe some cool dragon leather armor or something — _

"Stop it," Caleb whispers to himself.  _ "Stop it.  _ You have made your decision. Do not torture yourself…"

But it's like trying to hold water in his hands. The voices slip through.  _ Yeah, we're, like,  _ preetty strong _ now, Fjord. And Caleb is basically already a dragon. He can  _ breathe fire,  _ that's like halfway there. _

_ I cannot breathe fire. When have you ever seen me breathe fire? _

_ We don't even know if they're fire dragons, though, they might be ACID DRAGONS. What's the worst kind of dragon? Are there any dragons that can just SHOOT BLOOD?! _

_ What are you all lookin' at me for, I got no fuckin' clue. Sure. There's blood dragons. Why not. _

_ Oh my god, you guys, what if we meet a  _ baby blood dragon  _ and we could like  _ take it home  _ and teach it to — _

"Fuuuuuuuuck," mutters Caleb. He's pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. "Fuck — I cannot — "

What if he turned around? Probably nobody has even woken up yet, no one would have to know he was ever gone. He could sneak back into camp, pretend he's been keeping watch the whole time. Throw the dome up over them all like he never left.

And then what?

_ "Mutter und vater, gibt mir kraft,"  _ he sighs, making himself take another step, and another. The black of the sky has been giving way ever to slightly to blue in the distance as a horizon forms through the trees, and now in that blue there is the faintest tinge of rose. Dawn is near. It is achingly beautiful, with little stray snowflakes floating down every few minutes. They remind him of ashes.

Please, he thinks, just get me to the caves before the sun rises. Let me do this one thing right.

It feels like hours, but at last the sparse forest gives way to rock, then to what must be the bouldered feet of a mountain proper, looming lazily through the snow. Something yawns in front of him, maybe a hundred yards, ragged against the white haze. 

A cave. Massive, unforgiving.

Caleb slows to a stop. Swallows. Listens for any sound. There is nothing but the roaring in his own ears and the panic of his pulse.

_ Run away, you fool.  _ He forces himself to take three slow breaths. 

Somewhere behind him in the woods, a few birds are waking up, and something else — a squirrel, perhaps — skitters claw against bark as it races up or down a tree trunk. This forest is still alive, he thinks. At his side his hands are clenching into fists repeatedly, squeezing so tight it hurts.

_ Come on,  _ he wills,  _ don't make me go any further, just come on. Don't make me shout. Let my last words be the ones I already said. _

The dawn is creeping over the side of the mountain in full bloom by the time the first rumble comes from the cave.

Caleb fingers the stone in his pocket.  _ Come on.  _

It's bigger than he expected, when it shoulders itself from the cavern mouth, wings flashing red in the dawn sun. Far bigger. Without thinking Caleb takes a step backward, and the heavy fog of his dread is pierced through, for the first time this morning, by the ice-white point of real terror. It is  _ enormous.  _ It stretches like a reptilian cat, that long neck arching low, teeth as long as Caleb's arm. Two cruel golden eyes blink with a rasp of scales so loud he can  _ hear  _ it.

_ See me, you fucker. Smell me.  _

It does, of course; give or take a minute or two. It is a dragon. It knows every owl and rabbit in this forest. There was never any doubt that one human would be enough to get its attention. 

A gleam of interest suffuses the giant eyes as soon as it catches sight of him. They  _ lock on,  _ and from great twin nostrils heaves a billowing, black plume of smoke.

_ Fire, then.  _ Caleb is pleased somewhere in the midst of his horror. Until this moment the question of acid, lightning, or crippling cold was not one he could bear to dwell on, but this...this is good. This will be fast, and fitting, too. All he could ask for.

Now it's just a matter of bravery. He takes the stone out of his pocket, drops it at his feet into the snow.  _ Be burned up with the rest of me.  _ The dragon is moving, crawling hideously close, sending small rocks tumbling, its tail leaving a steaming furrow in the snow. There are no scorch marks on any boulders nearby, no broken or charred bones that Caleb can see anywhere: most likely this dragon has not eaten anything in weeks. It will not takes its time with him. It will  _ incinerate, _ and that will be all.

"Forgive me," he hears himself say as the huge crimson head rears itself in the air above him, and "I'm sorry," and it comes out as a whimper, it should fill him with shame, but Caleb just shuts his eyes, lets himself have this handful of moments of certainty, of the memory of her face —

All the breath is driven from him with a sickening slam. His face hits the snow. 

No, please, he wants to cry, please,  _ fire, _ not teeth and jaws — 

— but it's not, it's a warm body, hands holding him down, and a familiar voice in his ear.

"Caleb,  _ WHAT THE FUCK?!" _

His eyes burst open. 

There isn't time. 

One hand rips the pouch from his neck, flings the last thing inside it into the air, he drags in a desperate breath and screams a word, feels the magic shatter into being, rolls over and pins Jester to the ground with him, throwing his arms around both of their heads — 

_ If ever I have deserved anything,  _ he prays — 

The dragonfire hits like a meteor. 

Thunder has never been louder. The explosion must shake the earth: it stretches out second after hateful second, licking clean and hollow every atom of the air with its unthinkable heat. Hell has descended, thinks Caleb with perfect calm. There is nothing left.

When it is over, the air-light dome of the quickened  _ tiny hut  _ spell is glassy, soot-stained, but still intact.

Jester shoves him off of her, scrambles up onto her elbows. "What the  _ fuck,"  _ she repeats, pain and panic wild in her eyes.

Caleb stares at her. He has no words.

The dragon roars again, hurls flame down around them  _ again,  _ and Jester shrieks, ducking into the snow. Caleb grabs her by the shoulders and pulls her to himself. They are both shaking.

Finally the inferno passes, stray flames flickering around the dome like desperate tongues, and — "What are you  _ doing  _ here?!" demands Caleb. 

He can feel his fingers digging into Jester's shoulders as he holds her at arm's length; he doesn't care. 

"How did you get here?! What are you  _ doing?" _

"You're fucking welcome!" she shouts back into his face. 

"What is  _ wrong  _ with you?!"

He is going to shout more,  _ much  _ more, but another barrage of dragonfire deafens them both, and for a few minutes speech is useless. The dragon, it seems, has grown frustrated. It paces around the small — very, very small — magical dome, spitting fire, screaming as only a dragon can scream, and once it is evident that its fire cannot damage this strange little shelter, it actually  _ lunges.  _

Of course its claws cannot penetrate the spell, its teeth cannot get purchase on the rippling arcane surface, but that does not mean that the sight of a dragon assaulting the air ten feet from them is any less alarming. For a few seconds that stick like molasses in time, Caleb is paralyzed. Jester, huddled against him, is swearing rapidly in Abyssal, but he can't speak, or do anything but stare. Each time the mammoth jaws snap open and shut, there is a glimpse of that  _ empty throat,  _ wide as a tree trunk, blackened and rippling with muscle and slime — where he would have been — where —

Caleb leans over and retches into the snow. His head is pounding.  _ He is not dead. _ The thought dizzies him and for a moment he can't feel the ground or the snow, can't hear anything, isn't real. Isn't dead.  _ Oh, gods, he isn't dead. _

He's not sure how long he has been lying there before Jester is bent over him, grabbing his arm. Has she been shouting his name this whole time?  _ "Caleb,"  _ she repeats close to his ear. 

"Ja — ja, I am — " Caleb struggles upright. The air is ringing somehow. "I am here."

The dragon is gone. No, not gone — it has crept a distance away, Caleb realizes, but it is still watching them, crouched in the snow, those huge eyes narrowed to furious slits. 

"It's biding its time," he hears himself gasp, and he wraps one arm tightly around his own midsection. Fear or sickness — or possibly Jester tackling him earlier — has dug a deep cramp into his side. "It's hungry, it's going to wait."

Jester lets go of his arm. She says nothing.

"You have to get out of here," Caleb begins —

"What the fuck is going on."

Panting, clutching at his side, he stares at her. He has never heard Jester's voice sound so cold. Suddenly the most frightening thing here might not be the dragon lying in wait.

He finds his voice after a couple of tries. "I can explain."

"Yeah, you'd better. Because I am sitting in a bubble outside of a dragon's den in the freezing cold with puke in the snow and we're going to be here for a  _ while,  _ Caleb, so take your  _ fucking time." _

"I did not ask you to come here."

"No, you didn't." Jester folds her arms, and when Caleb won't meet her eyes she moves closer. All the snow and ice around them was vaporized in that first blast of dragonfire, but within the  _ tiny hut  _ spell it has been melting more slowly, and Jester's boots have to scrape through slush and mud. "You went off on your own. In the middle of the night, while you were on watch."

He says nothing, just stares at the dirty snow and lets her words sear and scald him as they ought.

"Oh,  _ ya,  _ I'll take the last watch, just wake me up at three or four, Jester, no problem." 

"I thought you were asleep — "

"Yeah, I know you did. You were supposed to."

Something in her tone of voice makes Caleb look up, and glancing at her face he realizes that Jester is trying not to cry.

It feels like a punch in the throat. "Jester," he breathes through the shame hot in his chest. Could — would she let him reach out and touch her face — ? No, that would not be…and besides, he forfeited any right to the touch of her skin when he walked away from camp this morning. He forfeited a great many things. 

Jester's lips are trembling, though she has ignored Caleb's use of her name, and her speech is a little rushed now, like the words have to push and crowd past her feelings to get out. "You never take the watch alone. You always take it with Nott. Or with  _ me.  _ So when you…" She stops, swallows, her jaw and shoulders tight with tension. "I stayed awake. I saw you — you were supposed to be on  _ watch,  _ Caleb, and you just  _ left,  _ and the bubble popped, and you left us alone in the woods — "

"There was a good reason," Caleb manages to get out hoarsely.

"What  _ reason?!"  _ Jester leans in, eyes blazing and full of tears. "To go and get yourself killed by a dragon?! Did you think you could take on a  _ dragon  _ by yourself?!"

The dragon in question, Caleb notes out of the corner of his eye, is restless, pacing in a wide perimeter around them, wreathed in steam and smoke. He shuts his eyes tight for a moment and tries to concentrate. "Did you tell anyone else?"

"Answer my — "

"Did you tell anyone else that you were  _ following  _ me, Jester."

There is a pause. "No, I didn't," she says finally, shortly.

"Okay." Caleb takes a deep breath, opens his eyes, exhales. "Okay. Good."

"Oh, good, great, that's great. We're just trapped here alone, that's all."

"The others will come," says Caleb, keeping his voice as level as he can, "they will follow your tracks and find us, and you will be safe. All of us together should be enough, it is just one dragon."

"Yeah, just one dragon. Pfff. That's, what, like, nothing."

She is not playing with him. There is panic forced down under her words, and beneath that an anger that he has rarely seen in her. Well, she should be angry. She should be disappointed in him, disgusted.  _ Nice to meet you at last,  _ hisses some corner of his ringing brain,  _ my name is Caleb.  _

"You should not have followed me," he whispers.

There is silence, and then Jester reaches forward and takes his hands. Her fingers are soft, her thumb traces over one of the faint scars on his wrist, and the tenderness of it might break him into pieces. "You have to tell me, Caleb." 

Gone is the anger, now, or set aside, and that's wrong, but something in her has steadied and righted itself even as he is swung terribly off-balance, and he has no choice. Desperate, he clasps her hands in return. 

"I followed you here because I thought you had, like...a plan, or an idea, I thought you were going to  _ do  _ something."

"I was."

"Caleb, you were just standing there."

He meets her eyes.

"Why were you just standing there?"

Caleb clears his throat. "You should go." One, two more seconds of the warmth of her hands, a last indulgence, and then he lets go, shoves his own hands into his coat. "Make for the woods, get back to camp. I will buy you time."

She shakes her head. "I'm out of spells. I didn't get enough sleep."

"I will buy you time," he repeats, willing her to understand.

Comprehension flickers in her eyes. "You are scaring me, Caleb," she says slowly.

In reply — what else can he do? — Caleb reaches up, grabs the collar of his shirt, and tugs it down as far as he can.

He sees Jester stare at his bare chest, then back up to meet his gaze, still confused. Well, why would she remember? he concedes to himself, it's not like he ever wore it openly. It's entirely possible that they only ever talked about it once, and that would have been a long time ago. So, yes, he will have to explain. 

With a sigh, he pulls his shirt back up. "My amulet."

Jester's eyes go wide.

"The one I've been wearing for six years. The one I stole, to keep…" It's still hard to say his name,  _ verdammt noch mal _ . "To keep Trent Ikithon from finding me."

"Oh, god," breathes Jester.

"I lost it when we were captured by those ogres, way back…"

"Yeah."

"Now he can scry on me, whenever he wants." Caleb tries, but can't suppress a shudder. "Among other things."

"What other things?"

"Anything. He can find me."

"But it's been, like, a month," Jester says, searching for a way out as always. "And before that it's been years and years, right? He's not going to still be looking for you."

_ No, of course not, I am probably being stupid.  _ Say it, put some effort into it. She will believe you. You can make her believe you, he tells himself, you know you can do that. 

"Caleb."

A smile like a spasm twists his mouth for a moment, though he has never felt less like smiling. "I want to lie to you right now, Jester." Sorrow drags heavy on his tongue. "I wish that were true."

She is very pale, with two bright spots of color in her cheeks, and Caleb thinks of the dawn blushing in the blue sky, that last dawn of his life. He reaches out, touches her chin with the back of one finger without thinking. 

Jester inhales sharply and leans away from his touch. "He hasn't found you yet."

"No." He drops his hand lamely, heat rising in his face. "Not exactly."

"But he's...closing in?"

"He, ah…" 

The dizziness is back, so Caleb thrusts both hands into the snow on either side of him and lets the cold take over. After a few seconds it is gnawing at his skin, numbing his fingers, going from an ache to a burn to an agony, but it is better than disappearing again. He is able to focus, to get the words out.

“He sent me a message. In my head."

Jester gives him the silence he needs, and he sucks in a ragged breath and goes on.

"He sent me a  _ voice  _ in my  _ head, _ two weeks ago, and he said that he was so — " Caleb grits his teeth. "So pleased to finally see me again. He has missed me terribly, you see. So now I have to go to him, or he will come to me."

A fierceness has been glowing in Jester's eyes as he speaks, and now he knows what she is going to say, and he loves her for it. But it can't go like this. He must help her see.

“Jester.” He takes her wrists in his hands, and she flinches at the cold —he can barely move his fingers. “He will kill you all.”

There is a rumble in the earth. Both of them twist round in time to see the dragon leap from the mountainside behind them, scattering ice, debris, and small boulders, and take to the air. Any lingering snow on the ground is blown clear by the beating of the monstrous wings as the dragon begins to circle them like a vulture waiting for its prey to expire. Caleb can barely feel Jester's pulse quicken beneath his numbed fingertips as they both watch.

"It definitely can't get in, right?"

"Uh…"  _ Fuck me, it's huge. _ "Yes. No. Definitely not."

"Definitely not," Jester echoes doubtfully, staring back down at him.

He swallows. "Unless it actually tries to land on top of us, I'm pretty sure — "

"We're not going to let him have you, Caleb."

Here we go, he thinks miserably. He'd rather face the dragon.

"Jester, I appreciate — "

"No, we are not doing this." That fierceness, that blazing, is back.  _ Götter oben,  _ she really could punch him through a wall. "You are not going to die, and you are not going to sacrifice yourself. There are other ways."

“I wish that were true. I really do, Jester. You have no idea. I have spent the past…" 

"It  _ is  _ true."

"Two weeks," he continues, ignoring her, "wishing it were true. Two weeks trying to think of something else — but there is nothing. Please believe me. We are strong, we are a family, ja? But we are no match for the Cerberus Assembly. I do not think we are even a match for Trent, even on his own. You have never met him, Jester, I pray you never will, but you do not know what he is."

Her eyes are as bright as the sun. “Then we would die fighting for you.”

"I do not — !" His breath is coming hard, like the wind has been knocked out of him again. "I do not want that! Gods, I…"  _ Bright as the sun.  _ "I do not want that. And, Jester — Jester — " She  _ must  _ understand. "You would not die. Not right away, you would be — "

"Caleb — "

" — broken. You would be broken."  _ Tief durchatmen, Widogast, deep breaths. _ "It would be slow. He would take his time."

"Then we will run, if we have to."

It's the way she says it so simply, like there's no question, that pulls him so hard, he is almost lying at her feet, or in her lap, or with his face buried in her chest, before he can help wishing it. He blinks back the burning in his eyes.  _ “Liebling,  _ I do not know where we could go. The world is...small, to a mage like him.”

"You don't know that. You don't know that we couldn't do it." The edge is coming back into Jester's voice, sharp as a blade. "We're not alone in this world, you know, we have friends. And Trent Ikithon is not a god."

"It is more than that. Hey. Hey..." A tear has spilled down Jester's face, and she rips one hand from Caleb's to wipe it away furiously. "It is more than that." 

"How is it more than that," she glares at him, as another tear rolls down, and another.

"Because I do not know what he has planned for me, but I know that if it does not end with my death, it ends with me becoming…" He searches for the words, faltering at the sight of her tears. "Becoming theirs. Their...creature. And I would rather die." 

Overhead, the dragon screams. 

"Listen to me. I would  _ rather die,  _ Jester. This is my choice. They  _ will not  _ make me into something I am not. They do not  _ get me  _ again, do you understand?"

“You didn’t say goodbye.”

The words smite his heart, stop him in his tracks.

"I looked for a note." She is brushing more tears away with her free hand, blinking rapidly. "In case you were doing something stupid. Didn't find one. So I thought you must, you know. Know what you were doing."

"I'm sorry," he says, and it's not enough. “I couldn’t." It's not enough. "You would have stopped me.”

“Yes, we would.” Her voice is hard. 

_ “You  _ would have stopped me. Believe me, Jester, I — I wanted — " Caleb swallows. “I had words I was going to say, things...” Swallows again. “I am sorry,” he repeats lamely.

Jester has pulled her other hand away. The brightness in her eyes is gone. "Fuck you," she says very quietly.

If he were to stand up right now and walk outside the bubble, would she be able to stop him? As long as he is quick — but no. The spell will end if he leaves this space. Jester would be unprotected. And that was the whole point, wasn't it.

"We wouldn't have found you." It is impossible to look at her face. "We would maybe have found bones. Maybe, at the most."

"I would have given — "

"We are a  _ fucking family,  _ Caleb, you don't — " Her breath hitches in a near-sob. "You don't  _ do that  _ to your family, you don't just  _ leave them behind.  _ You had  _ no right."  _

It's as he takes her face in his hands that the first shout sounds in the distance.

Jester actually slips in the mud and slush as she tries to get to her feet. "Here!" she yells hoarsely, waving her arms. "We're here!"

"They're by the caves!" comes a faint cry in response — barely audible from so far away, but it sounds like it might be Yasha.

_ Den göttern sei dank,  _ thinks Caleb numbly, but they're not here yet, and there is still a dragon in the sky. "Hold on," he cautions Jester, standing up alongside her, scanning the treeline. Something is not right. "We're going to have to help them. You have no spells left?"

"Nothing," she says, drawing her sleeve across her face, "but I've got my axe…"

The dragon is wheeling faster. "I don't think that will be of much use," mutters Caleb uneasily. "I have nothing left either, I did not prepare — ah — " One torrent of flame rends the air as the dragon plummets, swooping along the mountainside towards its new prey. 

"Shit."

"Ja, we will have to run, I think." He grabs Jester's hand. "Get ready. Into the forest, and then lie low, and if we are lucky we can outsmart it — I passed some smaller caves on the way here that I do not think it could get into — "

He stops. The shouts are getting closer.

They are not coming from the forest.

Caleb shoves Jester out of the bubble.  _ "Run,"  _ he screams. "Go,  _ run,  _ get out — "

A ray of green light stabs up into the sky from somewhere nearby, and the dragon crashes to earth, writhing with rage and pain, but still very much alive, and then Caleb can see the figures for the first time as they move in with deadly speed. Four of them, he counts — then he is running after Jester, praying neither of them slips on the wet ground before they have reached the shelter of the trees — four of them, they might have a chance. Those four have to take down a dragon before they can do anything else. The rest of the Mighty Nein are somewhere in these woods, maybe somewhere close, and they will know what to do — Beauregard will know what to do, Fjord will know what to do, they have a  _ chance —  _

His leg goes out from under him, and he hits the frozen earth with a  _ crack.  _ A rib, he thinks dully, his mouth filling with blood.

"Get up," urges Jester — she is lifting him, but he twists out of her grasp.

"You have to go," he tries to tell her —

Then the world veers sideways, and everything is gone.

_ fin _

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "The Last Snowfall" by Vienna Teng. Thanks to [bringyouhometoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bringyouhometoo), my resident Zemnian expert, and [NefariousMoss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NefariousMoss), my glorious beta-reader, for their help. Is there such a thing as a quickened Leomund's Tiny Hut spell? Yes there is, because I said so.


End file.
